1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication systems, and more specifically to methods and apparatus for providing an incentivized cooperative system for accessing radio access networks that provides incentives for encouraging cooperation to access the radio access networks.
2. Background
In wireless communication systems, the available capacity for a mobile wireless device to access a radio access network (RAN) can be limited at times due to poor channel conditions, limited transmission power, and base station scheduling constraints. When the available capacity is so limited, this situation may give rise to applications or operations on a mobile device that may require much higher throughput than a regular best effort RAN bearer can provide to that mobile device, thus diminishing user experience.
In some known wireless systems, such as peer-to-peer systems, it is known to allow one mobile device to utilize other devices in an assisting function to provide better throughput and capacity to either other peer devices or a base station. These systems, however, are limited to the use of same radio access technology (RAT) between all devices. Thus, in certain situations, access to a RAN may be limited by conditions affecting all users of the same RAT, for example. Additionally, in known systems where cooperative access allows one user to assist another user, the capacity of the assisting user device to access the RAN may be limited due to sharing its resources with another user device. As incentive to encourage cooperative use and sharing of resources, providing compensation to assisting users is beneficial to ensure the success of such schemes.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a schema to better increase individual users' mobile device's RAN access throughput through cooperation with other user devices that also increases cell capacity, as well to provide incentivizing schemes to encourage such cooperative access from both users' and operators' perspectives.